Sir, Just this moment, on opening your fifth volume
of Miscellaneous Poems, I find the translation of
Cato’s speech into Latin, attributed (by common
fame) to Bishop Atterbury. I can most positively
assure you, that that translation was the work of Dr.
Henry Bland, afterwards Head-master of Eton school,
Provost of the college there, and Dean of Durham.
I have more than once heard my father Sir Robert
Walpole say, that it was he himself who gave that
translation to Mr. Addison, who was extremely surprised
at the fidelity and beauty of it. It may be worth
while, Sir, on some future occasion, to mention this
fact in some one of your valuable and curious publications.
I am, Sir, with great regard.

It is no trouble, my good Sir, to write to you, for
I am as well recovered as I generally do. I
am very sorry you do not, and especially in your hands,
as your pleasure and comforts so much depend on them.
Age is by no means a burden while it does not subject
one to depend on others; when it does, it reconciles
one to quitting every thing; at least I believe you
and I think so, who do not look on solitude as a calamity.
I shall go to Strawberry to-morrow, and will, as
I might have thought of doing, consult Dugdale and
Collins for the Duke of Ireland’s inferior titles.
Mr. Gough I shall be glad of seeing when I am settled
there, which will not be this fortnight. I think
there are but eleven parts of Marianne, and that it
breaks off in the nun’s story, which promised
to be very interesting. Marivaux never finished
Marianne, nor the Paysan Parvenu (which was the case
too with the younger Cr`ebillon with Les Egaremens.)
I have seen two bad conclusions of Marianne by other
hands. Mr. Cumberland’s brusquerie is
not worth notice, nor did I remember it. Mr.
Pennant’s impetuosity you must overlook too;
though I love your delicacy about your friend’s
memory. Nobody that knows you will suspect you
of wanting it; but, in the ocean of books that overflows
every day, who will recollect a thousandth part of
what is in most of them? By the number of writers
one should naturally suppose there were multitudes
of readers; but if there are, which I doubt, the latter
read only the productions of the day. Indeed,
if they did read former publications, they would have
no occasion to read the modern, which, like Mr. Pennant’s,
are borrowed wholesale from the more ancient:
it is sad to say, that the borrowers add little new
but mistakes. I have just been turning over
Mr. Nichols’s eight volumes of Select Poems,
which he has swelled unreasonably with large collops
of old authors, most of whom little deserved revivifying.
I bought them for the biographical notes, in which